On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 8.5%^* of the people living in Netherlands, against 9.6%^* across the EU — the 17th highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.

The largest single foreign citizenship among residents is Poland: 197,251 people on 1 January 2025.

In 2024, 257,714 people moved to Netherlands and 140,087 left: a difference of 117,627^*, more arrivals than departures.

Citizens and foreigners

Residents of Netherlands on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.

Residents of Netherlands by citizenship, 1 January 2024
Citizenship	People	Share of residents
All residents	17,942,942	—
Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below	1,523,873	8.5%^*
Citizens of Netherlands	16,398,845	91.4%^*
Citizens of other EU countries	745,524	4.2%^*
Citizens of countries outside the EU	773,602	4.3%^*
Stateless people	4,747	0.03%^*
Citizenship not stated	20,224	0.1%^*

Against the other EU states

Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Netherlands. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.

Foreign-citizen share, Netherlands and the states ranked next to it, 1 January 2024
Rank	Country	Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents
15	France	8.8%^*
16	Czechia	8.7%^*
17	Netherlands	8.5%^*
18	Sweden	7.9%^*
19	Greece	7.1%^*
—	European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked)	9.6%^*

Largest foreign citizenships

Residents of Netherlands by individual citizenship on 1 January 2025, the ten largest of the 197 citizenships Eurostat publishes. This is the citizenship people hold, not where they were born and not their ethnicity.

Ten largest foreign citizenships among residents of Netherlands, 1 January 2025
Rank	Citizenship	People	Share of residents
1	Poland	197,251	1.09%^*
2	Ukraine	124,723	0.69%^*
3	Türkiye	93,755	0.52%^*
4	Syria	86,411	0.48%^*
5	Germany	84,542	0.47%^*
6	Bulgaria	62,871	0.35%^*
7	Italy	60,711	0.34%^*
8	Romania	56,708	0.31%^*
9	India	55,965	0.31%^*
10	Spain	53,305	0.30%^*

Country of birth

Residents of Netherlands by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Netherlands's citizenship, and someone born in Netherlands may not.

Residents of Netherlands by country of birth, 1 January 2025
Country of birth	People	Share of residents
All residents	18,044,027	—
Born in Netherlands	15,018,371	83.2%^*
Born in another country	3,025,656	16.8%^*
Born in another EU country	795,637	4.4%^*
Born outside the EU	2,230,019	12.4%^*
Country of birth not stated	0	0.00%^*

Arrivals and departures

People who moved to or left Netherlands during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.

Arrivals, departures and their difference, Netherlands, 2024 and earlier years
Year	Arrived	Left	Arrived minus left
2024	257,714	140,087	117,627^*
2023	274,597	123,574	151,023^*
2022	326,798	109,616	217,182^*
2021	214,105	110,342	103,763^*
2020	182,244	102,502	79,742^*
2019	215,756	107,906	107,850^*

By citizenship, 2024

Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.

Arrivals and departures by citizenship, Netherlands, 2024
Citizenship	Arrived	Left
Citizens of Netherlands	38,282	48,656
Citizens of other EU countries	85,114	54,531
Citizens of countries outside the EU	132,064	32,518
Stateless people	373	22
Citizenship not stated	1,881	4,360

How to read these figures

Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.

Cyprus, covered in full

Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.

Keep reading

Modification notice and disclaimer

The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:

A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.

Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.

^* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.

Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →